There are moments, seconds really -the instant before she fully wakes up; crisp mornings when she's hit with the sharp scent of pine needles; the sight of fledgling birds trying out their fragile wings; when she tears into a warm, nutty slice of bread- when she forgets. But then she opens her eyes, and the certain knowledge that I'm not safe, he's not safe, we'll never be safe comes flooding back into her veins, driving her up, up and away until she can find him, hands clawed and ready to throttle anyone who might hurt him.
The war has been over for almost six months (Prim has been dead for 158 days, she hasn't seen her mother for 152 days, she hasn't spoken to Gale for exactly five months and she and Peeta, along with a handful of others have been slowly reclaiming District 12 for about seven weeks) but she can't force her body to relax. Sometimes it feels like her muscles have been clenched since the day nearly two years ago when Effie Trinket blithely called out "Primrose Everdeen," and that she has been balanced on the knife's edge of fight-or-flight ever since. And, in the end, she knows that the deaths of Snow and Coin, the cessation of hostilities and the declaration of peace are meaningless.
Because, even in the ruins of what was once her home, surrounded by familiar faces and a familiar forest, she knows she's not safe. They could come for her at any moment; they could come for him at at moment; they could take the only thing she has left.
Seven weeks ago, when the transport deposited them in District 12, she could barely step outside. The devastation choked her; the overwhelming scope of what had been done to this place where she had grown up, and the impossibility of ever putting it -or herself- back to the way it was.
Peeta carried both of their packs off the plane, and she tottered after him, batting plumes of smoke she was pretty sure only she could see away from her mouth and nose. They picked their way over the rubble, taking excruciating care to avoid anything that looked like bone or clothing or hair, nodding silently as the fifteen other volunteers who had come back with them departed towards their old homes. She'd thought he would lead her to the lot were his family's bakery used to be, because he hadn't seen it yet, he'd been trapped in the Capitol when she'd gone back to 12, because she hadn't saved him, she hadn't fucking saved him, but when they entered the square, he stopped abruptly.
She turned, looking for the danger he must have sensed, ripping an arrow from her quiver and sighting along the string, breaths coming in tight gasps and heart hammering in her chest. But it was an old danger he faced, a soot-blackened emblem of an old enemy. He dropped their packs at her feet and marched into the square, scanning the ground as he walked. He pulled a rib of thin metal from the rubble, and she could see the muscles of his back ripple as he rolled his shoulders.
She dropped her arms, releasing the torque on the bowstring, but still, always, on her guard, as Peeta dropped to his knees and began to pry the bolts from the metal restraints of the whipping post.
The bolts of the restraints were riven deep, and the bolts attaching the post to the ground were even deeper, and it was clear his tools were woefully inadequate to the task he had appointed himself. His soft grunts of exertion drifted across the bombed-out square, and she flinched every time he hurled a restraint into the gutted buildings surrounding them. It took him a full day and most of the night, and all the while she prowled the edges of the square with an arrow on the string, ready to put it through the eye of anyone who approached him.
Finally, as the crescent moon shimmered above them, he lowered his shoulders and crashed into the post, driving it into the ground with a CLANG that probably echoed all the way to the smoldering ruins of the Capitol. Watching him walk tiredly back towards her, his pale hair gleaming in the darkness, she allowed herself the barest instant to marvel at the sheer strength in his body, even battered and scarred by the very worst Snow could do. When he reached her, he dropped to the ground at her feet, and accepted the canteen she handed him, lifting it in a mock salute to the defeated whipping post, before pouring it over his head. She crouched next to him, wanting to reach for his hands, to cradle them to her chest, but his fingers were bloody and raw, and anyway she couldn't seem to unfurl hers from around her bow.
They sat, staring at the gutted square as bats fluttered above them, feasting on their bounty of carrion flies, until the faintest fingers of daylight crept over the horizon. He blinked, and turned to face her, never afraid to look her in the eye.
"People shouldn't be governed, like that." He lifted his chin towards the site of his efforts, eyes skimming over the dark smudge of the upended whipping post. "You can't have government through fear, or coercion, or...pain." His voice cracked on the last word, and every molecule of her body strained toward him, desperate to burrow into him, to erase his memories of pain, pain that she had caused, because she hadn't protected him, hadn't saved him, had let them take him...
"Katniss." He stood, his left knee creaking, and offered her his hand. Even now, his were the only hands she wanted on her, because he had always been so careful with her, letting her know it was always her choice, so she let him pull her to her feet.
"That's over now. It's not how we do things, in District 12. It will never be how we do things." His voice was rough and tired, and he was sweaty and covered in soot, but this was why she had bargained her life away to save him. This was why he would always be her weakness, and why she would never be worthy of him.
He picked up their packs, and lifted his battered hands to brush a strand of hair away from her face. "I just...want everyone to know that."
For their first seven weeks back in District 12, those were the only words he spoke to her.
She wants to stay curled in her blankets, curtains drawn against the sun, but the memories of Prim's lilting voice and her mother's industry drive her out of bed each day. She sets the house in the Victor's Village to rights within the first few days, and grins grimly to herself at the horrified shrieks she knows Octavia would make at the sight of her chipped and ragged fingernails.
But the gleaming floors of her house are worthless without Prim to slide across on her socks, and she cannot stay indoors. So she traverses the forest, teaching the re-settlers of District 12 what berries and nuts and tubers they can safely eat, and when to harvest them. She fletches arrows while sprawled on her porch, and stretches the hides of the rabbits and squirrels on racks built by one of her grateful students. She joins the gangs of volunteers scavenging the rubble and burying the bodies, and she even manages to speak at the mass funeral they hold on the last day of the fourth week, when the remains they buried almost certainly belonged to Madge Undersee and her family. She brings some of the most adventurous children to the Katniss-roots lake where her father taught her to swim, and almost convinces herself that she is doing this to give them a holiday, and not to make sure that they have all the requisite skills to survive a Hunger Games. She chops wood for hours, distributing it amongst the re-settlers, but always bringing a bundle to Haymitch, and always dropping a load at Peeta's back door.
Because Peeta's door is closed to her. The morning of their second day back in District 12, after she had been awoken by the clanks of the crew clearing away the first piles of rubble, she'd scrounged bandages and antiseptic from Prim's stock and stalked across the street to his house, ready to care for his battered hands. But the door was locked and the windows were shut and he did not answer her knock. Frantic, because she could not see him, and he wasn't safe, she sprinted around the house to the back door, already scooping up a rock to smash through the small pane of glass. But he was there, sitting at the kitchen table just inside the back door, turned away from her. She knew he could hear her, because his whole body flinched with every knock.
She had shouted herself hoarse and banged on the door until her knuckles were raw, and still he refused to answer her. If it had been anyone else -if it had been Gale- she would have heaved the rock through the window and forced her way in; she would have made him talk to her. But too many people had made Peeta do things over the past two years, and she refused to be one of them. He had basically given her everything; she could give him that, at least.
So she leaves him duck eggs and rabbit meat and dandelion greens, and she drags heavy bags of flour and sugar from the rubble of the bakery to his porch, and she experiments with feathers and fur to make him paint brushes, and whenever any of the re-settlers asks, brow furrowed, about him, she smiles a tight-lipped smile and tells them, as brightly as she can, not to worry. She keeps him safe, in the only way that he'll let her.
But he's not safe. She can hear him wake in the night, screaming and begging and sometimes calling her name. Their houses in the Victor's Village aren't that far apart, and the days are silent now, without the hum of electricity or street lights. Most nights, she sits, hunched and miserable, nose pressed to the glass of her bedroom window, sure she can make out his outline perched on the edge of his bed.
Peeta loved her, loves her, she knows. That is real real real. And they've both been gripped by nightmares, but they've always slept better curled around each other, pretending that they are safe, together.
But nobody shot you full of tracker jacker venom, a tiny voice that sounds disturbingly like Joanna's always reminds her. Nobody hijacked your memories and nobody tortured you and nobody turned your own fucking mind against you. Nobody has to remind you what's real real real.
They both have been gripped by nightmares, and they've always slept better, curled around each other. But now, maybe, she is his nightmare. For real real real.
On nights when his panicked cries awaken her, she straps on her boots and bow and stalks around Victor's Village, guarding Peeta's house from any monsters that might lurk on the scrubbed streets, because he won't let her fight the ones inside his head. Most of District 12 is rubble, and she's been told that countless small fires burn in the seams of coal beneath the District.
But Snow left Victor's Village mostly whole for her, so she would always know that all of this destruction and death was her fault, that she should have eaten the nightlock berries and died like she was supposed to. The reminder sits on her chest like a millstone, but she cannot help being fiercely glad that Peeta is sleeping in a locked house -strong and solid and up off the street. It may be all her fault, but at least she finally has a safe place to keep Peeta.
Exactly seven weeks and two days after arriving back to District 12, she barged into Haymitch's house without knocking, juggling a sack of pastries from the reconstituted Hob, and a jug of the bitter moonshine Haymitch drinks by the gallon.
His house is more or less clean, and she moved easily through the dimness to the sprawling sun porch that wraps around the back of the house. In her house, her mother and Prim made it a formal living room, but Haymitch is perhaps the least formal person in Panem, and the roaring fire reveals only his battered furniture and a motley collection of moonshine bottles.
She dumped the sack of pastries on the clearest section of the low table upon which he'd propped his booted feet, and grinned at his eager expression before tossing him the jug.
They ate slowly, sharing the deer meat pastries, and she even stole a sip of moonshine, before hastily handing it back, nearly retching at the burn of the liquor.
Comfortably full, she leaned back and dropped her own feet on the table, avoiding a parcel wrapped in a white cloth which was sharing the narrow space with their boots.
"I'm taking Amos into the forest tomorrow," she told Haymitch, and answered his curling smirk with one of her own.
He shook his head, chuckling under his breath. "This'll be his, what, fourth trip in?"
"Maybe he'll get past the boundary line this time," she said. "I've just never seen someone react to poison oak like that before."
Haymitch's smirk widened. "I know he just wants to play Robin Hood with you, but someone needs to tell that boy to stay out of the woods."
She nodded solemnly. "I'm taking him to look for wild honey...maybe I'll let the bees deliver that message." She held his gaze for a second, before they both broke into soft, gasping laughter, that almost felt real real real.
"My crew's finished up the outer edges of the Seam," he said, when they'd finally calmed down enough to resume their talk. "We're starting to work our way in, tomorrow."
She sighed, remembering the dirty, coal dust-streaked streets and ramshackle houses. "That's going to be a nightmare. The Seam houses were pretty shitty to begin with; one wrong move and everything could come crashing down." She stared into his eyes, letting him know that she was done with levity. "Make sure everyone is really careful."
He lifted the moonshine jug and saluted her, before draining the dregs. "Will do, sweetheart."
She stood, rolling her neck and cracking her wrists, letting herself enjoy the good work done by her body that day. She wrapped the dangling edges of the sack over the few remaining pastries, and picked up her bow and quiver. She tried to smile at Haymitch, to recapture some of their earlier humor, but it had fled into the night. She jerked her head towards the west-most wall of his house, in the direction of Peeta's. "Just got to go drop this off," she said, pretending as hard as she could that her routine of leaving food on Peeta's doorstep then crouching in the shrubbery to stare at his pale arm as he whipped it inside the half-open door was normal.
Haymitch swirled the moonshine jug, as if he were desperate to pull the last drops of the bitter brew from the curved glass. Even turned mostly away from him, she could still see the tightness of his lips, which was always the precursor to some cynical pronouncement that would usually leave her raging.
Instead, he sighed, exhaling the softest sound she'd ever heard him make, and a fearsome chill raced up her spine, freezing her from nape to the fingertips clutched nervelessly around the gritty burlap of the pastry sack.
He stared at her over the dull green rim of the jug, his eyes dark and sharp in the flickering firelight. Normally Haymitch Abernathy is completely fucking pickled; just stupefied in alcohol, and perfectly content to remain so. But sometimes -like right now- she understood why Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee chose him to help lead the rebellion, and how he managed to win the 50th Hunger Games. Because sometimes he seems so fiercely present and capable and smart. And maybe his tragedy is that he actually survived the games; that he lived, with the full and unassailable knowledge of all that he did, and all that he would do, to keep surviving.
"I just, never thought it would be you, sweetheart." He shook his head slowly, and looked past her at the blank wall of his house, as if he could suddenly see through the plaster and brick and into Peeta's house.
"You certainly spent enough time moping around, being useless, in 13, and I figured it'd only get worse, back here." He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and the noise of his hand brushing his dry lips rasped loudly in the dim room.
Her fingers twitched, itching for the handle of her knife or the sting of her bowstring, for anything that would make the bleary-eyed man in front of her stop fucking talking. He doesn't cower, but he does square his shoulders and shift the grip on the moonshine jug, in case he needs a weapon. Because there is violence is in the marrow of her bones; because her first reaction to any threat is always to batter it, to crush it, to destroy it. Haymitch calls her "sweetheart," but what he really means is "killer."
"I'm just saying, sweetheart, if I had to pick which one of you was going to hole up in their house and ignore everything and just, fall completely apart...well, I wouldn't've picked Peeta."
A hot waves of fury washed over her, coiling angrily in her belly. She dropped the burlap sack and raised her bow to her waist, one hand toying with the feathery shafts in her quiver, always ready to put down anything that might threaten Peeta.
He rolled his eyes at her, and curled his lips in a rictus grin. "What, you're going to shoot me?" He lifted his chin, baring his neck, mostly as if he were calling her bluff, but maybe just a little bit like he was begging her to do it, like he would welcome it.
"He's scared," she snapped. "He's scared and he was tortured, fucking tortured, and people don't just get over that, and-"
"Katniss." His voice was gentle, but he didn't look at her. "The war's over. The Games're over. He's safe. But maybe he needs you, to help him see that it's all real."
Suddenly, the answer slides into place, as smoothly as an arrow off her bowstring, or the curve of her body in Peeta's arms. Because she was useless, when she first arrived in 13; hopeless and frantic and furious and bereft. She hid in damp corners and air ducts, and the one person who she wanted was the one person who was lost to her. She helped with the war effort because it secure Peeta's rescue, but after every propo she curled up in the dark and wept, sure that they would beat Peeta just that little bit harder, to punish her for daring to be the Mockingjay.
For the past two years, she has only, always, been afraid. Fear shone, bright and pervasive, at the front of her mind; fear drove her decisions and her thoughts and every step she took. She trembled with it constantly, and nothing -not Prim's sweet face or District 13's deep bunkers or even Peeta's return- could assuage it.
But now, she suddenly realizes, she feels other emotions besides fear. She is curious and excited and hopeful and resentful and bored and glad; she is no longer simply a battered bundle of live wires, sparking and striking at all within reach. Threats remain, of course, even if she can't see them, and they will never be totally safe. But the time to live in perpetual fear is over. Somehow, her brainstem has figured that out. Peeta's hasn't. But she can fix that.
She spun on her heel, ready to begin her one-man rescue mission.
"Hey, sweetheart," Haymitch called, his voice following her around the walls and corners of his house. "Maybe leave the bow, and take the sandwiches?"
I've left him enough food, she decided. It's time he comes out and learns to get it for himself.
She stalked noiselessly through the long grass to Peeta's house, shouldering her bow and snatching up a fist-sized rock. As she approached the back door, she could see the golden glow of a kitchen fire, and she grinned to herself, happy that she likely wouldn't have to chase him through his house. Giving no warning, she smashed the rock through the small pane of glass in his back door and shoved her hand inside, twisting the lock and forcing the door open in one continuous motion. She tumbled through, eyes scanning the kitchen for movement, when she saw him.
He'd snatched up a bread knife as the glass shattered, settling into a fighting stance. His face and hands were covered with flour, and she could smell yeast and baking butter. But his eyes were blank with terror, and while one hand held the knife in front of him, the other was thrown up in front of his face, as if to shield him from the coming horrors. His mouth moved soundlessly and his eyelids fluttered as she stepped closer. She could smell the bitter stench of his fear over the smell of the honey-oat bread baking over the crackling fire.
Once upon a time, when he was trapped in a nightmare or a memory, it was only her voice and her touch that could calm him. For a while, after he was returned from the Capitol, it was only her voice and her touch that gave him the nightmares, until he re-learned what was real real real. But it doesn't seem like he's afraid of her, in particular; he could be fighting any of their innumerable enemies, or maybe just a figment of his own tortured imagination.
So, ignoring the foot-long bread knife and the tension in his muscles, she stepped under his guard and into his arms, reaching up to thread her fingers through his shaggy curls and cup his cheeks in her palms.
"Peeta, my Peeta," she crooned, butting gently at his chin with her forehead. "I'm here, you're safe. We're safe. We're in your kitchen, in District 12, and the war's over. It's over, Peeta." She tightened her grip on his face, trying to draw his eyes down to her own. "Feel the tile under your feet. Smell the bread in the stove." She stretched up and kissed his chapped lips, running her tongue against the loose seam of his mouth. "Taste me, Peeta. Taste how much I want you."
She heard the knife fall to the ground with a dull clunk, and then he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her against him until her ribs creaked.
"Sorry, sorry," he choked, his lips pressed against her hair. "I thought...I, I didn't know, who..."
"It's ok," she murmured. "It's ok. And I'm sorry, for bursting in and..." She trailed off, unsure if apologizing for scaring him was the right tactic to take. She brushed his hair out of his down-turned eyes, and pretended that she didn't notice his flinch as she lifted her hand towards his face. "Just, I'm sorry."
There are only two people to whom she has ever apologized; both had blond curls and sweet, sad smiles; one has been dead for 158 days and the other is standing in front of her, maybe closer to death than she had realized.
His breathing has slowed, so she carefully detached herself, and ran her hands down his arms, skimming her fingers across the jagged scars that dotted his biceps and forearms. Once, Peeta Mellark, the baker's boy, had borne scars from burning oil and heated trays -and maybe one or two from his bitch of a mother- but the Capitol polished away all the imperfections of his former life just before the beginning of their first Hunger Games. Now, he wears scars given to him by the Capitol; carved into his skin during his imprisonment at Snow's hands.
He shivered, because he doesn't like anyone to touch his scars, and stepped away from her, shrugging into a worn flannel shirt as he pulled a sugar-glazed cinnamon bun from a rack on the far countertop.
He dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and gently pushed another chair towards her with his bare foot, inviting her to sit with him. Immediately, she sat down, already reaching for the half of the cinnamon bun he was sure to give her. She'd always had a hankering for sweet things, probably because she'd so rarely had the opportunity to eat them, growing up in the poorest neighborhood in the poorest District in Panem.
She'd told him that, in their first Games, as they were hiding in the cave, slowly eating their way through the goat cheese and lamb stew sent by their sponsors. Peeta was flushed and shaky with fever, even after her rudimentary treatment of his leg, and she chattered incessantly, trying to keep him lucid while she wondered frantically, hopelessly, how she was ever going to save him.
"Prim says I have a sweet tooth," she murmured, curled against his chest, his thready heartbeat echoing in her ear. "She says, that it's the only part of me that's sweet, actually."
"N-no," he murmured, trying to smile. "You're sweet, 'ven Haymitch says. Lethal, but sweet."
"Well, it was a stupid thing to crave, because I almost never got to eat them. Deer meat and dandelion greens aren't exactly sweet, and it takes way too much effort to gather enough berries. Plus, we never could afford sugar."
He merely nodded, maybe too tired to respond aloud.
Nervous, she'd tapped his nose gently, and his eyes had flickered open, slowly focusing on her. "I bet you got to eat sweets whenever you wanted, baker's boy. I bet you ate cake with every meal."
He snorted, closing his eyes and smirking sardonically. "It's not like I got to eat cake all that often...if they were good 'nough to eat, we sold 'em." He paused, and his lips tightened. "We ate a lot of burned bread, or failed cakes. And if something was burned, it was likely my fault, or Rye's fault, so half the time we didn't get to eat it all."
She shivered, horror-stricken, at the idea that his mother had withheld food from him, and her fingers itched to feed him just another bite of the lamb stew.
She burrowed a little deeper into his chest, and let her lips rest just above the hollow of his throat. Gently, he ran his fingers down her spine, soothing the fury vibrating within her muscles. Even racked with fever and pain, he still comforted her. "I know what it's like, to be hungry, Katniss."
Now, back in his warm kitchen in the Victor's Village, almost two years removed from their sojourn in the cave, she is not sure how to ask him why he is still hiding; why he is banishing himself from the slow-growing fellowship of the re-settlers; why, for fuck's sake, he is ignoring her. Once, she could have told him anything, could have asked him anything. Once, she knew him down to his bones; once, he was the only person she could trust. But maybe this new Peeta -this Peeta who cowers in his kitchen, who does not turn to her for comfort- is no longer her Peeta. He was her Peeta even when he tried to choke the life out of her, even when he called her a mutt, because he was simply hijacked, and she had to rescue his mind the same way the strike team had rescued his body.
But seven weeks is a long fucking time, and she has loathed every second without him, even as she has fought the insidious fear that maybe he is happier away from her. For real real real.
Still, even sitting silent and stupid, chewing on her cinnamon bun, she cannot stop the grin pulling at the corners of her sugary lips, fiercely glad Peeta is here, in her sights, safe. She drank him in, greedily checking for evidence that he was whole and healthy and unharmed. Gale once told her that she only smiled in the woods, and maybe it was true: in the woods, she was swift and graceful and calm and so sure of herself. Maybe, once, she only smiled in the woods, but that was before Peeta.
She slowly licked the last of the cinnamon from her fingers and smirked at Peeta, enjoying the way the thin skin of his throat trembled as he watched her do it.
"That was delicious, Peeta," she said. "It's, good...that you're baking again."
He shook his head, and dropped his eyes to the glossy tabletop. "Yeah, well, there's not much else I can do." His tone was soft and bitter. "I've proven that pretty clearly." He rubbed his fingers absently over a burn mark in the cherry wood. "I can make bread, and be a liability. Oh, and, I'm damn good at being a traitor."
She flinched, and swallowed tightly. She could feel the anger rising in her, crackling in her bones. No one was allowed to hurt Peeta, not even Peeta himself. But this, this, was why he was avoiding her and Haymitch and the rest of District 12? This was stupid. Well, fuck delicacy -not that anyone had ever accused her of such a characteristic. If she burns, you burn with her.
"Well, fuck, Peeta," she said, already exasperated. "You weren't a traitor. You fought at the Capitol and it doesn't matter, what you said on a few stupid propos that everyone knew were forced..."
"Fuck, Katniss," he echoed, lips tight and white. "I was a traitor!" I couldn't hold out- I tried to convince everyone to stop the war effort, to stop fighting."
"You warned 13 that an attack was coming! Coin said that almost everyone survived because of your warning. You saved 13, Peeta, saved the whole war!"
"After I told everyone to stop fighting, to fucking obey the Capitol. After I almost wrecked everything!"
She sighed noisily, her hands clenched into fists that itched to beat this poison out of Peeta's brain. They were both trembling, standing face to face, their hips digging into the table that separated them.
"Jesus, Peeta, of course you did. You were tortured. Of course you said whatever they told you-"
"Gale wouldn't have broken." His voice was so soft and tired she could barely hear it, but it burrowed into her ears, and knocked the breath from her lungs. Was this what this was all about? Was it stupid fucking jealousy, after all? Didn't Peeta know how she felt about him? What he meant to her? How nothing in her world was right unless he was at her shoulder or in her bed? How she loved him, for real real real?
"Of course he would've," she snapped. "I would've. Anyone would. They told me what Snow did to you."
He sucked in a breath and shame blazed, red and hot, up his neck and cheeks. But he had nothing to be ashamed of, and she would never let him, not in front of her. So she stepped around the table, and moved into his space, backing him up until his ass hit the countertop, and he was trapped. His eyes skittered from side to side, and he swallowed convulsively, trying desperately to avoid her gaze.
She ran her fingers over his wrists, where they'd manacled him, pressed her forehead against his chest, where they'd burned him, ran her hands up his back, where they'd whipped him, kissed his cheeks, where they'd hit and hit and hit him, until he agreed to talk. She touched him with care, but without hesitation, letting him know that any marks on his skin were still just his skin, and she loved his skin, and she loved the man who walked around in it.
He breathed in tight, barely-controlled gasps, even as she stroked down his spine, trying to calm him.
"Shit, Katniss," he whispered, and she leaned closer, desperate not to miss a word. "I just...it wasn't like I couldn't take a beating, you know?" They both tensed, and she shook her head, trying to clear her mind of memories of the bruises Peeta sometimes wore to school, of his anguished face, when she found him in the river with an almost fatal wound in his leg.
He dropped his head, forehead resting on her shoulder, still trembling. "Everyone knows you're the real victor. I was...an accident." He sighed, and pulled her closer. "Guess we proved my mother right."
Enough. Enough shame and fucking enough of mothers. She wanted that bitch's poison out of his head and his kitchen and his future. She was fairly scorching with rage and helplessness, and her mouth ran on, faster than her boiling brain.
She pushed away from him, forcing his chin up so she could look into his glassy eyes. "Stop it! Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Peeta, for fuck's sake."
She spun away from him, and kicked open his kitchen door, revealing the darkness of the Victor's Village, and the bare patches of District 12, where the rubble of their former home had been mostly cleared away.
"You're not responsible for this! Snow is, and the Capitol is, and even Coin is, but you're not. Don't take it on yourself, Peeta, that's crazy." That way lies madness, she ached to tell him, but maybe it wasn't fair to turn this intervention into a revelation of exactly how gibberingly bereft she was in the weeks before his rescue.
He scowled at her. "Why the fuck shouldn't I, Katniss? You did." She flinched away from the bitterness in his tone, but wouldn't back down.
"You decided that it was up to you to save me, like I was some...damsel in distress! Like I couldn't do it for myself. Like I was...useless."
"Well, God, Peeta, you couldn't," she snapped. "But that's ok- I wanted to, because...because..." she trailed off, her mouth suddenly dry. She had to tell him, had to finish her sentence, but she was angry, and he was stupid and there was the tiniest fissure between them, cracked by the past seven weeks of his silence, and maybe her words would slip away before he could hear them.
He stepped back, away from her and the open door and towards the dimness of his house. He ran a hand over his face and glanced up at her, and she tried, she fucking tried, but the words wouldn't come past the tightness of her throat, and the soul-shattering fear that maybe he was not her Peeta, anymore.
"Just, just...get out, Katniss," he said, and turned away from her.
She slammed the door behind her, and as she dashed across the shale sidewalk to her house, she punched and kicked the air, wishing she was sinking her fists and feet into the delicate bits of her enemies.
Peeta has never been her enemy -even when he'd tried the strangle her- but she wanted to punch him, too, for hiding himself from her, for abandoning her for seven weeks, when her only waking thought ever was: is he safe? Because people abandoned her all the time: her father and mother; Prim, Gale, and his family; Rue; Cinna; Finnick, nearly every neighbor she'd ever known, and even her enemies.
Peeta has been the only constant in her life for almost two years; the only person who never left her. Until, of course, he did. And she wanted to tell him that she had protected him because she could, because he needed her to. Because otherwise, he wouldn't have survived. But also, she wanted to tell him that she did it because she loved him. Because protecting him was the only way she could show him. Because she would do anything to keep him. Because she needs him. Because he is the only true thing in her life, for real real real.
She saw a parcel wrapped in a white cloth sitting on her threshold as she climbed her porch steps, and she sank to her knees, absently wondering what it might contain. It was cool to her touch, and she gently unfurled the cloth from the oddly-shaped bundle, to reveal half a dozen cinnamon buns.
She dropped unsteadily onto her ass, hands pressed against her chest, trembling with shame. He had given her pastries and she had repaid him by screaming at him, and hinting that all of his blackest thoughts about himself were maybe true.
Vaguely, she remembered seeing a similar parcel on Haymitch's coffee table, and let herself be mad, for a fleeting second, that Haymitch hadn't offered her a cinnamon bun.
She wanted to dash back into his house, and pelt him with cinnamon buns and kisses, until he understood that she loved him, and that she was sorry. But that hadn't really worked the first time. Fire is catching, but sometimes she forgot how much it hurts to burn.
Instead, she gathered up the cinnamon buns, and strode into her house, heading unerringly even in the dark towards the kitchen.
Chopping nuts in the near-dark was almost as hard as following a finicky recipe by candlelight, and she nursed several sore fingers as she peeled the yeasty dough out of the towel-covered pot where she'd left it to rise overnight.
She'd scrounged through all of the drawers and cabinets in their gargantuan kitchen, but could not find any fucking baking tins, so she dropped her flour-ed bread onto cookie sheets and the backsides of muffin tins, hoping that it would hold some sort of form.
She left it alone to bake for exactly as long as the recipe said she should, but maybe the fire was too hot or she'd fucked it up in some other way, because all of her efforts were singed and blackened as she yanked them from the oven, muttering furiously to herself.
Exasperated, she didn't bother to let it cool; instead, she wrapped the best-looking flatish loaf in the first towel she could find, and basically sprinted out of her house to Peeta's porch. The sun was at its midpoint, and she knew he would be awake, industriously baking and likely nursing his hurt feelings.
But he wasn't there. His house was dark and the fires were banked, and after she let herself in via the broken door pane, she could not find him in any corner of the sprawling house.
She could feel the panic rising, making her nauseous and twitchy, almost compelling her to drop her ridiculous apology and stalk him through District 12, until she knew he was safe. Instead, she sat down on the splintery porch swing, and spent the afternoon making arrowheads out of the obsidian stones she collected in the forest, because they made for the cleanest kills. It took nearly all of her focus, to make sure that each plane was perfectly balanced, so even the novice hunters among the re-settlers had some chance of success.
The sun had almost sunk below the horizon when she suddenly heard soft footsteps echoing on the sidewalk approaching Peeta's house. Normally, she would have snatched up her bow up and swiftly dispatched the threat, but she could tell, based on the hesitation and slight shuffle on every other step, that it is Peeta. And Peeta is not a threat. So she swept up the obsidian shavings and carefully collected her completed arrowheads, letting him realize that she was the figure sitting on his porch, letting him get used to the idea that they were going to meet, for the second time in seven weeks.
His footsteps would never be light, not with his muscular build and prosthetic leg, but he stepped carefully as he ascended the stairs, as if he were trying to prevent any mark he might leave upon the world.
He dropped onto the porch swing without hesitation, and she smiled broadly as his hip nudged hers, glad that he was not eschewing her company or her touch.
"Here," she said, thrusting the loaf of bread into his hands. She heard it crunch as it crashed against his chest, and she hated that she hadn't managed to get it right, that she couldn't do something so simple for him, that her apology would be singed and bitter and probably unpalatable.
"Katniss," he murmured, surprised, and she jerked her chin at him, avoiding his questioning eyes.
He unwrapped the dish towel slowly, and she could smell him when he moved his arms; he smelled of yeast and dirt and sun-baked sweat, as if he had done a long day's work in a mine or a field or a forest. She wanted to bury her nose in the joint of his neck and shoulder and inhale him; she wanted to breathe him in and keep him safe inside her body. But, maybe, it is not her job to keep him safe; maybe he can do that for himself; and maybe she should let him.
"Oh, Katniss," he said, and his voice was amazed, wrapping gently around the harsh consonants of her name, softening her, as he always had done. He grinned at her, looking down at the mess of blackened bread in his lap, beaming his happiness and pride out into Victor's Village, as if she had actually made him something worthy of him.
"It's stupid," she muttered. "And it's burned; I fucked it up."
He laughed, perhaps expecting her to join him, but she didn't unbend. She'd screwed up; there was nothing funny about it.
"Katniss," he said, dipping his head to look her in the eye. "You didn't do this on purpose? To, to mimic the bread that I gave you? That, the first time?"
She whipped her head up to face him, surprise blazing across her features. The bread he'd thrown her, when she'd been curled up and starving among his trash bins, had been burned, but it was still the sweetest thing she'd ever tasted; the best meal she'd ever eaten, before or since. He'd burned it on purpose, she knew, so he could throw it to her; he'd taken a beating from his mother to give it to her. He'd saved her; her and Prim and her mother, and she could never repay him, even though she was still trying, almost a decade later. And maybe that was why it had felt so incumbent upon her to try to save him, before she began to do it entirely for his own sake.
" 'm sorry," she said, softly. "I didn't mean, to be an asshole, even though I was! And I'm sorry, Peeta, I am, truly, but I missed you so much, and I was so mad at you, and I hate, that you don't know why, why all I think about is making sure you're safe." She gulped. "Don't you know, Peeta?"
He dropped his eyes, shrugging slightly, and trailed his fingers across the burned bread.
"Nooo..." she whispered, shakily. "No. Not because of that, you stupid idiot." His lips quirked, and she almost smiled as well; even when she was confessing her love, apparently she couldn't be civil.
"I love you. I love you, and I want you and I need you, and you're mine and I'm yours, you stupid fuck. I don't care if you shut yourself away and don't talk to me again for weeks, because it won't change anything." She grabbed a handful of her blackened bread and crunched it between her fingers.
"Sorry if you didn't know that, and sorry that I'm shitty at talking and having feelings and, just..." She sighed, nestling under his arm, which was slack, probably with surprise.
She curled her fingers around the singed bread, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "My father, told me about old traditions, where even just a bite of bread supposedly gave people life." She inhaled sharply, and pulled a hunk of bread from the mess in his lap. She lifted it to his lips, and his blue eyes blazed, even in the dimness.
"With this bread, I give you life." He dipped his head, and ate the bread from her hand, licking the crumbs from between her fingers until she shivered with pleasure, imaging his tongue curling around other crevices of her body.
Suddenly, he leaned forward and kissed her, curling around her until she felt small and warm and safe.
"With this life, I thee wed," he murmured, cradling her head against his chest, so she felt his heartbeat, slow and loud and never-ceasing.
She wriggled in the cradle of his arms, not necessarily trying to escape, but just letting him know that she was not one of those women who would simply acquiesce, because she happened to love him.
"No, Peeta, we need to do a toasting, otherwise it's not proper," she protested half-heartedly, not actually inclined to leave the tight circle of his arms.
"Shut up, Katniss," he said, knocking the burned bread off of his lap, and pulling her onto it. He wrapped his legs around her, and for the first time in her life, she didn't struggle against that which was caging her. Instead, she welcomed it.
"I think you already did enough toasting, to last us quite a while, my darling."
It was almost full dark by the time they un-peeled themselves from the porch swing and went inside Peeta's house, still wrapped around each other. She had long grown bored of swatting mosquitos away from Peeta's bare neck, but he simply would not release her, and she would not force him.
He hesitated, just two steps up the staircase leading to his bedroom, as if he was afraid to ask something of her that she would not give. So, she charged past him, and by the time he arrived in his bedroom, she had stripped to her skin and was sprawled on his bed, ready to make love however they both wanted. She could feel her body tighten with pleasure at the unadulterated joy on his face, when he saw her, open and wanting, on his bed. And she promised herself, that she would show him that there was nothing to fear.
They were not safe. Neither of them would ever think that. They would never be safe. But they could be happy. They could be truly, easily, fiercely happy.
And people would tell stories of the girl on fire and her love, the baker's boy, and the stories would mutate, as they passed through the different districts and the generations to follow. They would tell stories of how Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark saved the world; how they defeated the tyrannical Capitol and stopped the Hunger Games and ushered in a new era of democracy and self-governance, where every person had a chance to succeed.
That would be their legend, and their legacy. But for all the interviews and exposes and broadcasts, nobody would ever truly know how they collaborated and conspired and how they built a life together. How, at their cores, they played the Games only to secure a fighting chance for the other; how each sacrificed himself or herself so that that the other might live. How they saved each other, every moment of every day, for ever and ever, world without end. For real real real.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading! Hopefully you enjoyed, and I am so happy to hear what you think!